A major cause of illness and death in pet birds is from drafts and chills. Birds lose up to 90% of their body heat through their feet. The rest of their body is covered by, a wonderful insulator, feathers. The traditional way to keep birds warm is to cover the cage with a cover. However, this does not warm the bird it just prevents drafts. In addition, it limits the light to the bird. Another solution has been to place heat lights near the cage. Unfortunately, this results in the bird having a skewed sense of night and day and the heat lamp will create its own convection currents. These currents or drafts commonly result in the bird being either over heated or too cool. Another solution has been to blow warm air on the bird through a perch. Again this results in drafts and the bird may get its nails stuck in the air slots in the perch. None of these solutions provide warmth directly to the area where the bird loses most of its heat, its feet. In addition, heat lamps and air blowers tend to reduce the humidity in the air which may result in respiratory problems for the bird.
Thus there exists a need for a heated bird perch that does not result in drafts, provides warmth to the bird's feet and does not alter the bird's sense of night and day.